


yet you're my favourite work of art

by radianceofthefuture



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art Museums, F/F, First Meetings, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 02:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15654081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radianceofthefuture/pseuds/radianceofthefuture
Summary: Really, this is just unbelievable. This isn’t something that happens to Éponine. Pretty girls don’t just approach her in art museums and offer to be her guide. Any moment now, her alarm is going to go off and she’s going to wake up in her apartment and have to get her siblings up and ready for school. This room and this museum and this beautiful person have to be figments of her imagination.(Éponine gets lost in an art museum. Cosette is there to help.)





	yet you're my favourite work of art

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Les Mis Ladies Week 2018. It doesn't fit any of the prompts because I started writing it before they were announced. My apologies.

Of all the places Èponine has gotten lost, the art museum is definitely the weirdest.

In her defense, the list of places she’s gotten lost is very short. Èponine happens to have been blessed with an almost preternatural sense of direction; it hardly ever fails her. Ironically enough, that’s kind of what got her into this mess in the first place.

It all started when Azelma came home from her field trip on Thursday.

“It was so cool, ‘Ponine,” she said, rocking onto the balls of her feet the way she does when she’s really excited. “They had these sculptures that were suspended from the ceiling and they were made of these, like, black orbs, and they looked like tornadoes and they would start spinning if you even breathed too hard near them.”

“I’m glad you had fun,” Èponine said.

“I think you’d like it, too,” continued Azelma. “The place is huge, and they have so much stuff, I don’t think we could’ve found our way around if we didn’t have a guide. Even you would get lost in there, I bet.”

Èponine sat up. “Now, I don’t know about that.”

“I’m sure,” Azelma insisted.

“How much will you bet?” Èponine asked.

Fast forward to Saturday. Èponine officially owes her sister twenty-five dollars, and she’s kind of pissed off about the whole situation. She looks around. She’s definitely been in this room before, but she’s not sure how she’s ended up here again. She’s beginning to suspect wormholes.

If she were to get sucked into a wormhole, she figures, there would be worse places to end up. The room is well-lit and airy, with high ceilings and skylights. It’s effectively an indoor sculpture garden, with statues ranging from six-inch wooden animals to larger-than-life marble gods. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a slightly grotesque twelve-foot angel, forged roughly in iron and bronze. There’s a gaping hole where its stomach should be, and it has a hand instead of a face. It’s all very Tony Kushner.

Aside from the statues, the hall is unoccupied apart from Èponine and two people about her age. They’re clearly art students; they wield sketchbooks and charcoal, and the shorter of the two is gesticulating wildly, clearly trying to make a point about the sculpture they’re standing in front of. Èponine considers asking them for directions, but she’s not sure whether they’re on a date and she’s reluctant to interrupt, so she turns around on her heel. Why is it that all the doors look the same?

“Hey, are you lost?”

The voice is gentle. Nonetheless, Éponine is startled, and she spins to see the speaker. It’s the taller of the two art students. When Éponine had noticed the pair across the room, she hadn’t really registered how pretty the girl was, too focused on trying to get out. Now, she can’t help but notice that her eyes are dark and soulful, that she has her cinnamon-coloured curls twisted up stylishly on her head under a piece of fabric, and that her bright, sweet smile is pushing dimples into her cheeks. Éponine is suddenly very aware of her own threadbare shorts, her knobby knees and overlarge front teeth and sandy hair in scraggly pigtails, and she blushes.

“It’s okay if you are,” the girl continues, seeming to mistake Éponine’s self-consciousness for embarrassment, “this museum is gigantic. It took me about half a dozen visits to stop losing my way. I’m Cosette, by the way. I can help you, if you’d like.”

Really, this is just unbelievable. This isn’t something that happens to Éponine. Pretty girls don’t just approach her in art museums and offer to be her guide. Any moment now, her alarm is going to go off and she’s going to wake up in her apartment and have to get her siblings up and ready for school. This room and this museum and this beautiful person have to be figments of her imagination.

“I don’t want to pull you away from what you’re doing,” she forces herself to politely refuse.

“No, don’t worry about it,” Cosette insists, shaking her head. Her headwrap and her eye makeup match her sundress; it’s all a bright, sunshiny peach colour that pops against her brown skin. “I’m just here for practice, I’m not working against a deadline or anything. Besides,” here she lowers her voice conspiratorially, “if I have to listen to Grantaire compare his boyfriend to one more naked statue, I might just gouge my own eyes out.”

Éponine laughs, surprised. So they aren’t on a date, then. She glances at the guy. Short, stocky, a little odd in the face. Cosette is far too good for the likes of him, she thinks to herself, and then immediately feels bad about it. It’s not his fault, really. Cosette is far too good for the likes of her, too.

“Sure,” she relents, “I mean, it’s probably my best hope of ever getting out, so lead on, I guess.”

Cosette smiles. “Awesome! This way – follow me.”

Éponine follows. They turn out of the vast room of statuary into one that seems to be full of macramé tapestries. Sometimes, Éponine really doesn’t get art. As they walk, Cosette keeps up a steady stream of conversation. It seems that she doesn’t even need to pay attention to where she’s going. Éponine is impressed, and as Cosette asks her gentle questions about her family and work and interests, she’s surprised to find herself actually answering. It’s almost disappointing when they finally reach the museum lobby.

“Thank you,” she says to Cosette, who has a bit of an odd look about her face. “I don’t know how long I would’ve been lost in there without you.”

“It’s not a problem,” Cosette answers. She draws in a breath, seeming to steel herself for something, before continuing in a rush, “Hey, look, there’s a gallery opening downtown next Friday, and I thought you might like to come with me? It’s nothing too weird, so you don’t have to worry about that. I just wanted to…ask.”

Éponine blinks, because what. “What.”

“Obviously there’s no pressure,” Cosette hastens to assure her. “If you can’t make it, or if you have to be with your siblings, or if you just don’t want to, that’s okay.”

“Yeah,” Éponine says, looking at Cosette and not quite sure what to make of her. “Yeah, that sounds great.”

Cosette looks surprised, as if she’d somehow thought there was a possibility of rejection. A smile breaks across her face like the sun from behind a cloud.

“Wonderful,” she says. “Here, give me your phone number and I’ll let you know the details.”

Éponine takes the offered phone and plugs her number into a new contact and hands it back, smiling shyly. “So I guess I’ll see you next Friday, then?”

Cosette beams back. “I’m looking forward to it.”

And as Éponine steps on the bus to go home, she thinks that she’s looking forward to it, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the jazz standard ["My Funny Valentine"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjuaZDdqmCw)
> 
> [I'm on Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/radiance-of-the-future)
> 
> Both of the sculptures specifically mentioned here (Azelma's tornadoes and the Angels in America-esque angel statue) are based on actual works displayed at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. However, while I intend most of my modern AU Les Mis fics to take place in Montreal, the museum depicted here is not the MMFA. Imagine a vast, senseless amalgamation of every art museum you've ever been to; that's where this takes place.


End file.
